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Video-game industry seeks a woman's touch

By Matt Slagle
The Associated Press

LM OTERO / AP Jennifer Canada, a Rice University graduate who is studying how to make video games, said she was drawn to the games, and namely "The Sims," because of her passion for architecture. But she misses having women friends in the largely male program.

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There's one woman besides Canada; the 98 other students were all guys.

She jokes that the ratio may be great for dating, but she sometimes was lonely.

"It's really different," said the 23-year-old student at Southern Methodist University's Guildhall school. "I miss having a lot of women friends."

The $10 billion industry may have entered the mainstream, but with a few exceptions, the target audience for big-budget video games is the same as it ever was: teenage boys gripped with visions of dragons, space ships and voluptuous virtual babes.

It doesn't help that the number of women developing games is also low — less than 10 percent of all game developers, said Peter Raad, Guildhall's executive director.

"I believe it behooves the gaming industry to attract more women developers," Raad said.

"Playing games is a primal human activity that knows no boundaries of geography, language or gender."

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Trying to break down the gender barrier in gaming were the organizers of the first Women's Game Conference, held recently in Austin.

"Games are no longer just for geeks," said Laura Fryer, director of Microsoft's Advanced Technology Group, which includes the company's Xbox console.
 
"Half of our population probably has an opinion about what should be in video games, but it goes unnoticed because we don't have a lot of women in the industry."

Many believe education is key to boosting the ranks of female video-game makers.

Because games require such a broad range of expertise, including artists, musicians and architects, it's really a matter of letting women know that they don't have to be programmers to work on games, Fryer said.

Canada, who enrolled at SMU after graduating from Rice University this year, said she was drawn to games, and namely "The Sims," because of her passion for architecture.

"The first game I played I pretty much took over someone else's computer playing it," she said.

"I liked building houses. I liked decorating the house and using cheat codes to get tons of money so I could build bigger houses."

At SMU, Guildhall has partnered with the online female job-recruiting Web site Mary-Margaret.com and the game review Web site WomenGamers.com to create a video-game scholarship for women. The scholarship will provide about $18,500, or half the cost of an 18-month certification program.

Many agree there needs to be more thought-provoking, story-driven games with more female lead characters and less carnage.

"The Sims" and "Myst" — a mix of social experimentation and archaeological detective work — are among the most popular games ever, largely because they appeal to both sexes.

The Europe-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publisher's Association published a recent report stating women are one of the keys to broadening video games as mass-market entertainment. The Entertainment Software Association reports about 40 percent of gamers are women.

And experts say older women are big gamers online, though they tend to gravitate to casual time-passers like checkers, chess and Scrabble.

But that hardly means all girls despise shoot-em-ups like Quake.

Ismini Roby, co-founder of WomenGamers.com, said there's a stereotype that women are interested only in simple puzzles or card games.

"We don't all like pink, and we don't all like the same types of games," she said. "The reality is that women like a variety of genres."